May 08, 2003
Using a Gigabyte USB bracket on an AOpen motherboard
I inherited a PC with an AOpen AP59S motherboard, which has onboard USB, but there was no USB bracket. The good folks at A-Plus Computer Services in Bryan were kind enough to give me a Gigabyte USB bracket, so I set about making it work with the AOpen motherboard.
As it turns out (and not too surprisingly), a Gigabyte USB 2.0+ bracket (p/n 12CR1-1UB030-11) can be used, with some modifications, on an AOpen motherboard.
The standard AOpen pinout for an AP59S can be found in the AP59S hardware manual (see graphic below). Assuming that all AOpen motherboards use the same pinout, or at least the same pin names, you should be able to make the Gigabyte bracket work with virtually any of them.
The plastic pin housing on the Gigabyte part has several of the necessary holes blocked, so take a sharp-pointed pocketknife and open up the holes, then use the knife to carefully pull up on the plastic retaining tabs and pull the plugs out of the plastic housing so you can rearrange them. Optionally, you could discard the plastic housing altogether and plug the individual wires directly onto the motherboard, though of course this might cause trouble for someone else down the road. :)
The Gigabyte wire colors are red, black, green, and white. These correspond to the AOpen pin names as follows:
red: V
white: D-
green: D+
black: GND
That's the correct order for the pinout; put a red-white-green-black down each side of the connector. This will leave an empty pair of holes in the connector, below the black wires. The plug on the motherboard has one missing pin; that's the "bottom," and the empty holes in the connector should cover that.
Since the Gigabyte part has four USB ports, while the AP59S motherboard only offers two connections, you'll have to figure out some sort of aesthetically pleasing way to cover up the two unused ports to avoid user confusion. I used electrical tape.
